A Public Service Announcement From ErinCooks.com

Friends, Romans, Cookbook collectors — if you signed up for gmail a million years ago (like I did) and you pride yourself on the fact that you own your first and last name @gmail.com without a ridiculous amount of letters and symbols following it, then please please please take a moment to check your account settings to see if the secondary email you used to obtain your wondrous email is still active. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you change your password on a whim after arriving home from watching the Cloverfield monster destroy Manhattan. Then let’s say you get the cold of the century and subsist on alternate doses of dayquil and nyquil for three days straight, and just maybe you happen to forget your password — you’re going to be screwed.

You see, Google’s slick little recovery system is more than happy to reset your password for you, but it emails it to your secondary account. Unfortunately, in my case, that email was linked to a Road Runner account I had in Maine 3 years ago. Oops! Next I had the pleasure of having to wait 24 hours before Google would allow me to try to access my account via a security question. I spent the last 24 hours in a state of abject terror, praying that I had selected a question I could remember the answer to. Literally my whole life is ensconced in my gmail via folders and folders of organized insanity. Photos, recipes, all of the details surrounding the Maid of Honor duties for my cousin’s wedding…talk about anxiety.

Well tonight I said a little prayer and google asked me to prove my worth by telling it who my first teacher was. It took me like 15 attempts before it let me in after I finally remembered my nursery school teacher’s name. You guys, I literally burst into tears. I would have lost my mind if I had to try to recreate my 207 google reader subscriptions. Don’t be like me! Write down your passwords and review your account settings or you might end up being [email protected] And that people, is true horror.